BEN VENUE.
Whothat has read “Rob Roy” would not wish to make a pilgrimage to the clachan of Aberfoyle, where visitors can see for themselves the historic coulter of the “Bailie,” still red-hot, hanging on a tree in front of the hotel? It will be remembered that this implement did no little damage to the Highlandman’s plaid, and led to the very important question, when the articles of agreement were being decided on in the inn, after the fracas—“But who’s to pay for ma new plaid?” And who that has read of Roderick Dhu and Fitz-James would not wish to go to the top of Ben Venue? Well, all this can be done in one short day from Glasgow, and at a very small outlay of money; and with my reader’s leave I will act as his cicerone, in case he should wish to visit a district which is more visited and better known by the world at large than any other in Scotland.
Take a return ticket to Aberfoyle by the North British, and if money is a consideration, do it on aSaturday. If walking is no consideration to you, if you can walk six miles over a hill and then climb two, up a safe but very and continuously steep mountain, start, after you have had a look around and at the old brig, up the road to the east of the hill. Take the old road, with its short cuts as often as you can, and you will be well on your way before the coach, which has to walk the half of the way, will overtake you.
But on the other hand, if money is no consideration and walking is, you can get a ride over and back for the reasonable sum of six shillings, by the new coach road recently and well (in a double sense) made by no less a person than his Grace of Montrose. Before reaching the summit you have the slate quarries, giving employment to about 100 men, on your left, and after passing the summit you have the Gloomy Glen, and Loch Drunkie, with which it communicates, on your right. Here also you get an instalment of the land of the mountain and the flood, and as you see Ben Venue now towering in its lonely greatness to the left, apparently much higher, though nearly 500 feet less than Ben Ledi in front of you, a little to the left, you begin to wish you could drive right up. A few steps further and you are in sight of “the Lake of the Level Plain,” with “bold Ben A’an” standing aloof to the north. Even the rude mountains seem to wear agentler look as they meet the pure gaze of “lovely Loch Achray,” and the place is a very sanctuary of sweet and quiet influences. The ascent is best made by leaving the coach road at Achray House, before coming to the wooden bridge on the Teith as it is about to fall into Loch Achray. Pass through the offices of Mr. Thomson, to whose family we Glasgow people are indebted for so large and so cheap a park as we have at Camphill, go across the burn coming down Glen Reoch, and keep on the grass-grown cart road, with the Teith on your right, till near the sluice between Loch Katrine and the burn which is its overflow. This overflow is not now so large as before we in Glasgow began to make such a pull on Loch Katrine. Here, on the left, you will see a clump of eight or ten trees, chiefly birch, with a mountain stream to the right of it, and there is the place where you should begin your climb, keeping this little stream on your right, keeping near to it for guidance, refreshment, and to cool your fevered brow. When you have reached the first beginnings of the tiny stream, keep to the right under the shade of a great rock, at the far end of it turn to the left, make for the ridge before you, and when you have reached it, the last and pleasantest part of the climb is now to the right, amid largish rocks, which make the approach to thesummit something like the burying-place of giants, and, strange to say, it is all covered over with “ladies mantles.” On the way up specimens may be gathered, if you are that way inclined, of the Burnet saxifrage, moneywort, and marjoram; also, of the juniper and yew, the fruit of the latter being exceedingly beautiful with its bright red waxen cup holding the seed.
The height of Ben Venue, “the little mountain” (as compared with Ben Lomond), is 2393 feet above the sea level, and the ascent can be easily made in two and a half hours. I have done it in an hour and forty-five minutes from Achray House, but this was without a rest, which I could not advise anyone to repeat. You are now looking down on the world-famed Trossachs. It has been well said that the scenery around the Trossachs “beggars all description,” a phrase more forcible than elegant; still it is true, and only a Scott could do it justice. The whole district has been immortalised by him; but forcible as are his descriptions, they do no more than justice to the original, which has been touched by nature’s fingers with loveliness of no common kind. There is such an assembly of rude and wild grandeur as fills the mind with the most sublime conceptions. It is as if a whole mountain had been torn in pieces and had fallen down by a great convulsion of theearth, and the huge fragments of rocks and rocky wooded hill lie scattered about in confusion for several miles along the side of Loch Katrine. Black and bluff headlands of rock dip down into the unfathomable water, or, to speak more exactly, into a loch which was found recently to be 75 fathoms deep, and which on account of its depth scarcely ever freezes. Then there are deep retiring bays, there are beaches covered with white sand, and grave rugged cliffs with wood which seems as if it grew out of the solid rock.
Nothing could well be more wild and desolate than the top of Ben Venue. You may be there and not hear or have heard anything, not even the melody of birds, or the bleating of sheep, or the cry of a shepherd, or the barking of his dog, since you heard the whirr of the partridge in the valley below. At one time the eagle was to be seen here sitting in lonely majesty or sailing through the air, but it is now banished. The heron, however, still stalks among the reeds on the side of the lake in search of his prey, and the wild ducks still gambol on the water, or dive beneath the surface. You look down on the most romantic part of the lake, with the Otter Island, and the “Rob Roy” sailing into the picturesque pier which is hidden by the western end of “RoderickDhu’s lookout,” where nature is shown to best advantage, where mountains and rocks, which appear to have been thrown around in the rudest forms, are covered with trees and shrubs that give variety and grace and beauty to the scenery.
There are some who connect the word Katrine with Cateran, the wild and lawless freebooters who infested its shores; but it is called Ketturn, or Keturin, by the natives; and the latter part of the word when thus pronounced is like the name of many a place in the Highlands whose appearance is specially wild and savage. For example, we have in Inverness-shire Loch Urn or Urrin, which means the Lake of Hell; and in Cowal Glen Urrin, or Hell’s Glen. The loch is the receptacle of a hundred streams, which after rain foam down their rugged sides as white as “the snowy charger’s tail,” and after falling into Loch Achray, and from that into Vennachar, it finds its way, under the name of the Teith, into the Forth 3 miles from Stirling.
At the base of the mountain you have Coir-nan-Uriskin, the cave of the Goblins (best got at by a boat from the Trossachs Pier), a place rendered venerable by Highland tradition and superstition, overlooking the lake in solemn grandeur. It is a deep circular hole of at least 600 yards in length at the top, gradually narrowing towards the bottom, surrounded on all sideswith steep rocks, and overshaded with birch trees which shut out the sun. On the south and west it is bordered by the shoulder of the hill to the height of 500 feet; and on the east the rocks appear to have fallen down, scattering the whole slope with fragments, that shelter the fox, the wild cat, and the badger. It is said that the solemn and staid meetings of the Urisks, from whom it got its name, and who are supposed to be scattered all over the Highlands, were held here. “Those,” according to Dr. Graham, “were a kind of lubberly supernaturals, who, like the brownie, perform the drudgery of the farm, and it was believed that many of the families of the Highlands had one of them attached to it.” Sir Walter Scott tells us that tradition has ascribed to the Urisk a figure between a goat and a man; in short, however much the classical reader may be startled, precisely that of the “Grecian satyr.” Behind the precipitous ground above this cave, at a height of about 800 feet, is the magnificent glen, overhung with birch trees, called Bealach-nam-Bo, or, the Pass of the Cattle, through which the animals carried away in a foray in the Lowlands were driven to the shelter of the Trossachs (rough places). It looks like an avenue from our nether world to another and a higher sphere. Not far from the cave is the island to which one of Cromwell’s soldiers swam toget a boat, and met his doom in the manner described in the “Lady of the Lake,” at the hand of a woman. With one sweep of her dirk the Highland amazon is said to have severed his head from his body.
Opposite you is the steep and pyramidal mount Ben A’an, 1851 feet high, with the Trossachs Hotel at its left base, which is built on a spot called Anacheanoch-rochan, a name unpronounceable by any but a Celtic tongue. A little farther on, at the end of the lovely Achray (the Loch of the Level Field), is the Brig of Turk (the Brig of the Boar), where Fitz-James discovered that he had outstripped all his followers. Behind that you have the Forest of Glenfinlas, once a royal forest; and behind that rises Ben Ledi (the Hill of God) to 2875 feet. Farther on you have Loch Vennachar (the Lake of the Fair Valley), with its islands, and the Ford of Coilantogle at the far end of it, to which Roderick promised to lead the king in safety, and where the fight took place—“the Gael above, Fitz-James below.” Still further off is Callander, looking bright and fair under the influence of Old Sol, and nestling at the base of Uam-Var. Looking south, you have immediately before you Glen Reoch and Ben Reoch (the Brandered or Striped Glen and Ben). Over this you see the long, flat, and fertile carse of the Forth, with theKippen and Gargunnock hills on its south, and Stirling Castle, and Dunmyat above Menstrie, and even Ben Cleugh above Tillicoultry. Due south you can see Buchlyvie, a much more hospitable place now than it must have been found to be by the writer of the ancient ballad, who described it as a
toonWhere there’s neither horse meat, norMan’s meat, nor a chair to sit doon.
toonWhere there’s neither horse meat, norMan’s meat, nor a chair to sit doon.
toonWhere there’s neither horse meat, norMan’s meat, nor a chair to sit doon.
toon
Where there’s neither horse meat, nor
Man’s meat, nor a chair to sit doon.
Farther south is the Strathblane and Kilpatrick hills, while to the west and south you have, notwithstanding that the mighty Ben Lomond is now in front of you, a good view of the hills near the foot of Loch Lomond, and around Loch Eck and Loch Goil. Due west you have the Duke of Argyll’s Bowling Green, made up of such tidy little mountains as the Cobbler and his two neighbours to the right of him—Ben More and Ben Vane—both a little higher in life than himself, he being only a cobbler. In the north you see Ben More (3845 feet high), to the west of it Ben Lui (3708), and away in the far west Ben Cruachan (3611), and many others too numerous to mention.
If you have read the “Lady of the Lake,” as all should do who propose to make this excursion, you will have been able to follow “the windings of the chase,” and to have taken a mental picture of adistrict which, before the days of Scott, were almost as unknown to the Lowlander as the interior of Africa, and into which, when they did go, it was with the apprehensions of Andrew Fairservice, “that to gang into Rob Roy’s country is a mere tempting of providence.”
It is no part of our plan to describe that wilderness of beauty, “all in the Trossachs Glen,” which attracts so many tourists from all parts of the world year after year. But if our hill climber has got any superfluous energy after he has gone up and come down, it would be a pity to be so near the Trossachs without actually seeing the famed and fabled spot.
It is to be hoped that you have brought with you more than the three brown biscuits recommended by Dr. John Brown, because accommodation for man and beast is but scarce in this part of the country, except to those who are not suffering from a depression of trade. The walk or drive over to Aberfoyle in the cool of the evening will enable you to catch the last train, which brings you to the city shortly after eight o’clock. But even if you should miss it, you can telegraph the fact to your friends at home, and resign yourself to the enjoyment of a few extra hours in one of the finest districts in Scotland. It is not given to every one to miss a train, and afterwards be thankfulfor the mishap, nor to repent openly and honestly for the harsh words which escaped his lips when he saw the tail-end of the guard’s van vanishing down the line. And yet we would not be surprised to learn that such had been your condition in the supposed circumstances. Your gratitude and your repentance might be alike sincere.